Tag: wcw

So WWF /E, WCW/NWA, USWA, GWF, WCCW, AWA and more, they all make up a big part of my childhood watching pro wrestling on TV. If it was pro wrestling on TV I would be watching it. Back in the late 80’s into early 90’s you could find it all on TV in some form or another. GWF, USWA, AWA, and WCCW was on ESPN, WCW/NWA was on TBS and local stations, and WWF was on USA and local stations as well. I used to gobble up pro wrestling anything like kibble because it was on a lot of stations at one point. Nowadays though the main player in pro wrestling is still the WWE on USA Network with WWE also having the WWE Network. The funny part of the WWE Network is along with old programming of the WWF and WWE it also has the old WCW/NWA, WCCW, AWA, programming of my childhood on there among other things. You note I don’t mention ECW and that’s because I didn’t discover that until my late teens, technically not childhood. Yet nowadays as a modern pro wrestling fan, I always do ponder what has kept me interested in the product after all these years. This is where I talk about that, in my own bit of the Life and Times of a Modern Pro Wrestling Fan.

With me I had my hardcore period of being a pro wrestling fan in the late 90’s. Now why the late 90’s? That was the rise of the Internet and all of the pro wrestling news sites. Now at the click of a button and a 56K modem you could access anything you’d ever want to know and beyond with the pro wrestling scene. I followed so many sites it was unreal from Lords of Pain and beyond, if it was a wrestling site I would be wanting to read it. Anything to learn more and get more informed about what was going on in the world of wrestling. It was so excited to hear about all these rumors that were going on, sometimes they were false and sometimes they were true, but it was all so exciting either way. I learned about the ratings war of WCW Nitro vs. WWF Monday Night Raw and the hour by hour breakdowns of both shows, ah the days of the Monday Night Wars. Between the ongoing battle of WCW vs. WWF and the rise of ECW, the late 90’s were a great time to be a fan of pro wrestling. Then WWF won the Monday Night Wars and bought WCW, and ECW also being owned by the WWF as well. WWF was the grand powerhouse of wrestling and also the early 00’s were a period where I started to dial back my interest too. I think if I didn’t take the small breaks from pro wrestling I did, I probably wouldn’t be watching today as WWF had a lot of hit or miss years in the 00’s after they bought WCW and I only kept tabs on big events whenever they started up. It was around I think 2007 or so when I got back into things again and haven’t really left since.

I followed NWA/TNA as it developed when I could, especially when it hit Fox Sports and then Spike TV until the product got pretty painful by the end of that run. Yet I still found WWE to be the product I still consistently followed week to week. Then I found WWE to be a hit or miss adventure, TNA only loosely sparking my interest, and ROH started to get on TV recently and I’m still hit or miss on that too. Then a little show on the El Rey Network appeared called Lucha Underground and that’s when I became a reborn pro wrestling fan once more. I even approach WWE and so forth with more interest again thanks to the Lucha Underground express. Being a modern pro wrestling fan can be tough as nails but when you find a great alternative it makes everything else a little more interesting. WWE even has their own alternative with NXT on the WWE Network, it’s still WWE but operates a tiny bit differently than the main roster WWE shows. I’m even exploring new federations on youtube and more, which is a story for another day.

The life of a modern pro wrestling fan is one that doesn’t just revolve around one federation, it revolves around many. Yeah there are your WWE fans and even TNA exclusive fans, yet take a wander and check out new things. On my end, I plan on diving more into ROH more in the coming months to explore even more cool pro wrestling out there. Take care and thanks for reading!